Friday, January 6, 2017

I am pleased to announce the publication of “75 years since Monod: It is time to increase the complexity of our predictive ecosystem models”. This opinion paper contributes to the debate about the level of complexity in ecological modeling. I have been developing relatively complex models for some time now and often the complexity is the subject of criticism (as part of the Q&A part of talks and seminars and the journal and proposal peer review process). Over time I have come to develop counterarguments and I am now at a point where I feel it would be useful to share these with a larger audience. This paper is my attempt to deliver a broadside salvo at the critics of complex ecological models.A bit of a personal perspective: With this paper I am questioning some of the long-standing principles of ecological modeling, i.e. that models should be as simple as possible. Writing this paper made me think of the movie “Jerry McGuire”, where he writes an assay “The Things we Think but Do Not Say” criticising how things are done in his business. He ends up getting fired…